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This course will focus on a range of experimental postmodern texts published in the past fifty years (e.g. by Brigid Brophy, B.S. Johnson, Christine Brooke-Rose, Julian Barnes, Jeanette Winterson) and read them in the context of prominent theories of postmodernism. We will probe the linguistic and aesthetic strategies these texts employ with respect to the questions they raise about epistemology and representation as well as the status of literature. Moreover, we will explore their engagement with issues of gender, identity or history as well as with ethics and the political, and finally consider to what extent postmodernism still informs contemporary fiction and whether it is justified to see it as a movement or literary fashion that writers have already left behiind. Please get hold of and read the following texts: Juian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters, Christine Brooke-Rose, Life, End of, Brigid Brophy, In Transit, B.S. Johnson, House Mother Normal, Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry. Further material will be made available at the beginning of the semester. |
